Anger At Italian Quake Funeral

By the end of the mass funeral Sunday, Cire Riggio could control his rage no longer.

"I'd really like to know who built that school, I'd like to know the architect who designed it," Riggio shouted after the service for 26 children, including his twin boys, third-graders Gianmaria and Luca.

All were killed in the collapse of their school during an earthquake Thursday as they were celebrating Halloween.

"Old people, fathers, die in earthquakes. Here only children died in that cursed trap," Riggio said bitterly.

Italy has launched an investigation into why the school failed to withstand the 5.4-magnitude quake. Many experts have said that a well-built modern public building, constructed to meet earthquake standards, would be unlikely to collapse in a quake of that intensity. The town's school was built in 1953, but recently enlarged.

All nine students in the first grade and 17 other elementary school children perished, along with a teacher. Another teacher, her pelvis crushed as she tried to encourage her first-grade students to duck under their desk, remained hospitalized Sunday with severe injuries.

In all the quake claimed 29 lives. Two elderly women also were killed in their homes when the quake struck this town of fewer than 1,200 residents.

Sunday's funeral was broadcast live on state television and attended by President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi and other top officials.

The mother of 8-year-old Luigi clutched a picture of the boy striking a silly pose, with his favorite fruit, cherries, dangling from his ears like earrings.

"I am Luigi's mama," said Nunziatina Porrazzo, but she said she was speaking in the name of the mothers of "I am the momma of all these angels."

"I ask only one thing of everyone, that all schools be made safe. I don't want any mama or daddy, any one, ever to weep for their children."

Firefighters, police and others who had helped dig out survivors and bodies helped carry the 26 white coffins up a winding dirt road to the town's cemetery.

"Remember mama! Remember mama!" one woman called out over and over as she followed behind her child's coffin. One woman carried the book bag of her dead child as if going to school.

The three, mahogany coffins of the adult victims followed behind.

A little girl struggled to carry a five-foot-tall stuffed bear behind the coffin of her sister.

Stuffed animals and sports trophies were piled atop some of the coffins.

Bishop Tommaso Valentinetti, of the nearby Adriatic seaport of Termoli, which was also damaged in the quake, urged authorities to step up vigilance to guard against similar tragedies.

A red-eyed Mayor Antonio Borrelli, whose six-year-old daughter, Antonella, was one of the first-graders, said he told the Italian president "to be here with us not just in this moment."

A letter from some of the surviving children was read at the funeral.

"Dearest Lorenzo, Domenico, Giovanna, Costanza. You are the friends who until yesterday sat next to us while the teacher explained the lessons," the children said. "A single instant has divided us for life. Anyway, you're in our hearts and we'll never forget you. Ciao."

At the Vatican, Pope John Paul II expressed his "fatherly closeness" and implored God for "the comfort of Christian faith and hope."

Following two strong aftershocks Friday, authorities ordered the town evacuated, with residents sleeping in tents on the outskirts of town. An appeal was made donations of children's shoes.

Investigating magistrates who inspected the site said they will look into whether charges of negligence or manslaughter are warranted.

The engineer who worked on the school renovations, Giuseppe La Serra, 48, told the ANSA news agency Saturday that he added two classrooms — not an entire story as Italian news reports have said

to the school in conformity with building codes. He denied reports heavy cement had been used.

Many have also criticized the failure to designate San Giuliano and other towns in the south-central Molise region as earthquake-prone areas requiring special construction rules.

Premier Silvio Berlusconi led a special Cabinet meeting in Rome at the same time as the funeral to approve $50 million in aid for stricken towns.

The country was shaken Sunday as millions of TV and radio viewers heard the broadcast over and over of the plaintive cries of Angelo, the last child to be brought out alive from the school, 17 hours after the school collapsed.

"Ouch, my arm, my arm!" the 9-year-old boy cried as rescuers struggled to pull out the boy pinned under wreckage. "I know it hurts," said one of the rescuers. Shouting encouragement as the boy wailed, the rescuer said, "Come on, there'll be a nice pizza waiting for you."

San Giuliano's tragedy was eerily similar to one which struck the town of Balvano, near Naples, during a 1980 quake which claimed 2,570 lives in the area, 80 miles southwest of San Giuliano.

In Balvano, 26 children were killed when part of the town's church collapsed. The pastor and the constructor who did renovation work on the church were convicted, then acquitted on appeal of convictions for manslaughter.